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Art & Art History vocabulary · Museums & Galleries

Curate

Meaning in art & art history, with examples

/kjʊˈreɪt/verbCommon term

In art & art history, curate means: To select, organise and present artworks for an exhibition, collection or event, deciding on the theme, the order and how the works are displayed.

In Turkish: küratörlüğünü yapmak, (sergiyi) düzenlemek, seçip düzenlemek

How it is used

Patterns: curate an exhibition, a show curated by…, co-curate. In recent years the word has spread to playlists, menus and shops, which some art professionals find annoying. The noun is curation or curating.

Example sentences

  1. The exhibition was curated by a team of three young art historians.

  2. She has been asked to curate next year's biennial.

Common collocations

  • curate an exhibition
  • co-curate
  • curated by
  • carefully curated
  • curatorA person who chooses and arranges artworks for exhibitions, or who looks after and researches a museum's collection.
  • exhibitionA public show of artworks or objects, arranged in a museum, gallery or other space, either for a limited time or permanently.
  • biennialA large international exhibition of contemporary art held every two years in the same city, such as those in Venice, São Paulo and Istanbul.
  • permanent collectionThe artworks and objects that a museum owns and keeps long term, as opposed to works borrowed for temporary exhibitions.

More terms: Museums & Galleries

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